Replies

October 26, 2006
ACLU at Duke panel tonight
Posted at 10:06 PM by Jon Ham

I attended the panel sponsored by ACLU at Duke tonight at the Bryan Center. Prof. K.C. Johnson was brilliant, as expected. Man, that is one smart guy. Can he defend the lacrosse players if it comes to trial? He’d do a great job. Larry Holt of the Durham Human Relations Commission was also on the panel, as was the impressive Stephen Miller, executive director of the Duke Conservative Union. I also got to meet blogger John in Carolina, and spoke with Prof. Steven Baldwin, who wrote that great letter to the Duke Chronicle two days ago.

I was going to blog at length about the evening but with the World Series on one channel and the Hurricanes on another, I just haven’t been able to gather my thoughts. Let me just say that the guy who took it on the chin, other than Durham DA Mike Nifong, of course, was Duke President Richard Brodhead. I didn’t hear a kind word for the man all night. Oh, wait. Yeah, I did. The ACLU moderator said he heard Brodhead urge a hate-filled crowd last-spring to withhold their judgement on the lacrosse team. Boy, that’s leadership. More tomorrow.

http://triangle.johnlocke.org/blog/

Just got back. It was KC Johnson, a guy from a city commission that focuses on Trinity Park (Cole? - I couldn't clearly figure out what his deal was - he's not with the city per se), and Stephen Miller from the Duke conservative union. A fourth panelist, a representative of the student body, had canceled. The moderator made the point that they had tried to cast a wide net, and that others, such as a representative from Nifong's office, etc., had been invited and declined to attend. The smallish room was full. There were a few students attending but it was mostly old guys like me. :)

I didn't take notes so I disavow any errors. The Friends of Duke University had passed out Dr. Baldwin's article. The ACLU student guy who was moderating made sure and announce that it wasn't distributed by the ACLU folks. Fair enough.

Each panelist made an opening statement and then there were questions.

KC introduced himself as a legal procedure geek (my description) which is what got him interested since this case is so far outside what is supposed to happen. KC's theme was that "flawed procedure produces flawed results". He went through the code of conduct that we've read here and gave, you should pardon the expression, a bill of particulars as to how Nifong's conduct in this case has violated procedure. He noted that NC is one of the few states in the union that does not have a procedure for reining in a "rogue DA". He remarked that it should be the next order of business in the next legislative session.

Cole talked about the problems in Trinity Park between the students and the permanent residents and apparently was trying to imply that the situation with the students was an accident waiting to happen.

Miller talked about the group of 88 and how egregious their behavior had been. He read the statement that had been printed in the Chronicle and outlined just how far out of line some of the faculty had been. Miller was impressive and restores my faith that there are some rational students at Duke.

The discussion after generated not much heat or light. The only thing I can remember that was truly interesting was that, in response to a question, KC said that the bar generally doesn't interfere with ongoing cases and that disbarment procedures generally wait until after a case is resolved. I made the point that Duke should take a stand, point out that the civil rights of its students had been violated, and re-admit CF and RS.

I did meet some interesting people after
John in Carolina (I'll sure he'll post shortly)
Steven Baldwin. He remembered that I had e-mailed him. He told me some interesting stuff I can't repeat. Some of it may become public shortly. What a stand-up guy.
A very nice lax mom whose name I'll withhold.
There was an N&O reporter there that I flogged about correcting their coverage. She looked at me like I was from the moon. We'll see how they cover it.

Problem is that none of the movers and shakers were there so, while it was a nice exercise, I'm not sure anything really was improved.